u/DeJagerDivan

I recently read two books with this rather steamy dynamic:

{Melissa and the Vicar by Minerva Spencer} 🌟🌟🌟🌟

MMC is a notorious London madam on vacation in a small country town where she poses as a lady and falls into mutual infatuation with the too-glorious-to-be-true young curate, who is the fifth son of an earl.
It is a very entertaining read with likeable MCs and a sweet build up of their relationship. Certainly strains suspension of disbelief that a nobleman/clergyman would be so naive in accepting a prostitute/madame as his wife (and expecting his family/community to do the same) but I was rooting (pardon the pun) for them all the same. There was some very hot scenes, but again the suspension of my disbelief was stretched that a clergyman who was a devout virgin just weeks before would be diving (tongue-first) into rimming and anal sex without skipping a beat…

{The Seduction of Mr. Alfred Saintsbury by Lydia Lloyd} 🌟🌟🌟

This is a very steamy book featuring a super sweet and mightily repressed vicar who cannot even masturbate without extreme guilt. Enter the lady of the manor who has a terrible reputation and is widely hated. She decides to toy with poor Alfred, basically making him her bitch with the threat of dismissing him from his living. It’s called The Seduction of Mr. Alfred Saintsbury, but the sweet thing is that he unexpectedly seduces her and cracks her defences with his absolute blind devotion. Some of the spicy scenes are next level hot.
I did really enjoy this book, but I only gave it 3🌟 because it’s written in dual first person which became mightily confusing for a tired reader like me. I also didn’t like it when Alfred got macho and talked about killing people for Annabelle as it just didn’t ring true to his character.

In short, I love this trope. It’s jolly good spicy fun (but check the CWs!!). Let me know if you have similar recommendations please!

I have a gigantic book hangover after reading {Broken Things by Jessica Cale}.

I’m crazy for well researched HR that has everyday MCs and unusual time periods and settings. Too sappy, too rapey, too chaste or too graphic all put me off. I enjoy all HR, but I’m reasonably fussy about what I *love*. Sufficed to say, I LOVED Broken Things and it is one of only a couple of books that I rank at 5🌟. I’ll copy the blurb below, and here’s some dot points about what I loved:

- Set in the English Restoration Period, approx 1678, following plague outbreaks and the Great Fire of London.
- Author is a historian, and has a great podcast called Dirty Sexy History.
-Set in London’s Southwark slums, in a ramshackle inn.
- MMC Jake is a washed up and injured Dutch Jewish prizefighter with no family or prospects. 38yo. He’s kind, capable and protective.
- FMC Meg is a barmaid who has been whored out to keep the bar afloat since she was a teenager. 36yo mother of three older kids. She’s bright, tough, brash, and both loved and hated by her community.
- It’s a gritty and rough tale, but there is so much levity and sweetness. Think talking through a crack in the wall between their bedrooms, him comforting her after an incident braiding her hair cuddled on the floor (he has braiding skills because he used to be a goldsmith before the fire where he lost everything).
- The tension and spice is top notch 👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽
- There’s a great cast of side characters, from the battered bar fly, to the old Jewish baker.
- A lot of symbolism.
- Feel good and uplifting without being cringy.

There’s a fair bit of violence and despair, but somehow, and I don’t know how, I did not find it depressing. It made me very glad I don’t live then/there, but I was so uplifted by the story and resilient characters.

Highly recommended! Can’t wait to read the others in the series!
_____________

BLURB

Rival. Sister. Barmaid. Whore.

Meg Henshawe has been a lot of things in her life, and few of them good. As proprietress of The Rose and Crown in Restoration Southwark, she has squandered her life catering to the comfort of workmen and thieves. Famous for her beauty as much as her reputation for rage, Meg has been coveted, abused, and discarded more than once. She is resigned to fighting alone until a passing boxer offers a helping hand.

Jake Cohen needs a job. When an injury forces him out of the ring for good, all he’s left with is a pair of smashed hands and a bad leg. Keeping the peace at The Rose is easy, especially with a boss as beautiful—and wickedly funny—as Meg Henshawe. In her way, she’s as much of an outcast as Jake, and she offers him three things he thought he’d never see again: a home, family, and love.

After Meg’s estranged cousin turns up and seizes the inn, Meg and Jake must work together to protect their jobs and keep The Rose running. The future is uncertain at best, and their pasts won’t stay buried. Faced with one setback after another, they must decide if what they have is worth the fight to keep it. Can broken things ever really be fixed?

I was excited to find a series of HR novels by Australian author, Darry Fraser. I don’t believe she’s been recommended on this sub before so I wanted to introduce her book that I just read ‘The Milliner of Bendigo’. It is set in 1898 across a few regional towns near where I live in the state of Victoria, Australia. It has a 4 star rating on Goodreads and comprises a sleazy con man, a trial, a murder, an adventure, two Irish love interests (one former and one current), and lots of hats.

Here’s my subjective pros and cons:

Pros
Well written
Entertaining story and love an travel/adventure plot
Good selection of well developed main and side characters
A fun second chance romance with middle aged side characters, one of whom is very vocal about the trials of her ‘change of life’ (menopause)
A very slow burn romance with a hunky but repressed MMC
No nobility, just regular people and women with ambitions outside of marriage.
A very Aussie flavour that shows it is written by an Aussie!

Cons
>!Depressingly spiceless. There is such great tension built up between MCs and then… nothing. Well there’s a declaration and kiss, but that’s it. Weirdly there is some very mild spice between the older side couple, so I had some false expectations about the MCs. Left feeling disappointed but I guess that’s what imagination is for!!<

I’m keen to read more from Darry Fraser!

‼️SPOILERS AND NSFW THROUGHOUT‼️

Allow me to introduce the most whackadoodle HR I’ve read so far -
{MacLyon by Lolah Burford}.

Set in 1746 Scotland and America. The MMC Diar MacLyon is the cocky, wild and stubborn son of a highland laird. FMC is a beautiful and innocent young lowland lady, Mary Elisabeth (I’ll call her ME). Sounds promising! But here comes the plot…

- Diar violently abducts ME from a party, then he forces her to marry him, makes her sit through a celebration feast at his manor, then viciously rapes her.
- His father comes home the next day, abuses him and kicks him out (butt naked) for what he did to her.
- Days later, Diar returns to see his family being killed in persecutions that followed the Battle of Culloden, and his new ‘bride’ being gang raped by soldiers.
- He is about to be hanged when ME sees one of her relatives is the captain and she pleads with him (whilst naked) to save Diar.
- Diar is angry that she interceded because now he will suffer more, and sure enough he gets shipped off as a prisoner to America and forced into indentured labour on a plantation. His treatment is extra awful because he is stubborn and rude, and refuses to work.
- This starts a journey for ME who decides she loves her husband (lord knows why) and must rescue him. The majority of the book is her making her way to him in Georgia, using her body to achieve each step of the journey. She starts off by becoming mistress to the relation who stopped Diar being hanged. In this section she ends up being thrown in a pit where she miscarries. There are so many instances of her with various men that I quickly lost count. She would either become someone’s mistress, or have a love affair, or work as a prostitute, or casually bone someone who was assisting her. All this is written very matter-of-factly. Like ‘Jim brought home five men who took her in turn, and then Jim also took her’ (very rough paraphrasing).
- She is also raped many times on the journey, and the ‘steamy’ scene used at the start of the book as a promo is actually a violent rape scene when he forces himself up her butt, whilst penetrating her with a knife handle. She then pulls the knife out of her vag and stabs him with it, then he tries to choke her to death.
- ME finally finds Diar and brings him the pardon she procured for him. He is near death because of his latest stunt defying the master of the plantation. Is he pleased to see her? Nope. He calls her a whore and tells her to go away etc.
- She then becomes mistress to the plantation master (who is much nicer than Diar), and together they give everything to Diar that he needs to be free and go home or do whatever he wants.
- Diar abuses her again but eventually decides to take what they’ve given him and go.
- After a couple of days of freedom, he suddenly decides he does want ME back, so he goes and forcibly abducts her from the plantation master.
- She’s happy to stay with him and they are being nice to each other and have an awkward bedroom scene where it seems he can’t get it up but then maybe at the end he does? It was unclear.

I gave it 🌟, and I feel that was generous.

It can be read free here by anyone keen for a deeply unromantic read.

Has anyone else read this? Or anything from Lolah Burford? I skim read another of her books and it was also weird, but not MacLyon levels of weird.

Season one of Cable Girls (Las Chicas del Cables) was so brilliant, but as the series progresses the storylines are increasingly wild, to the point of being absolutely ridiculous. I’ve seen spoilers about the conclusion and honestly at this point I’m only watching because the cast are so attractive.

SPOILERS - spoilers throughout this post. I did attempt to cover them but I don’t know that it worked…

I recently finished reading {The Kadin by Bertrice Small}. It’s a very interesting book, well written and clearly well researched, creatively mingling real historical figures with fictional characters from the late-15th to mid-16th centuries. I did like it - but personally I don’t see it a romance. FMC is abducted at 13yo, sold into slavery, ends up in the Ottoman sultan’s harem. The prince deflowers her through the formal ritual at age 14 when he is 25 and she becomes his head wife after giving birth to the first son. It may be historically accurate, but it’s still intensely creepy, and throughout their relationship there was no great love scenes or any sort of tension or depth between them. They love and admire each other, but he also has three other wives who he loves, plus many other women in his harem. Initially he was a benevolent patriarch to an unusually happy blended family, but he gets cancer and becomes very volatile, brutal (not towards FMC) and impotent. All of this happens whilst she is a slave, and though she lives in luxury, she is tightly constrained in her behaviour and hidden from the world. She knows that chafing against the system will lead to her being murdered and thrown into the Bosphorus in a weighted sack - be still my beating heart…

&gt;!After MMC dies, the book goes on for WAY too long IMO, and there is a huge number of characters who come into it to the point where it’s virtually impossible to keep up with all the names. A new love interest enters the scene by raping FMC in her 50s and goes on to eventually marry her.!<

The book is sold as a romance (note the saucy cover image from the original 1978 edition, and the blurbs from different editions…), but I think it does a disservice to the readers. Romance lovers will be heartily disappointed, whilst people who enjoy historical fiction may not bother to pick it up.

I would recommend it as long as readers have a reasonable expectation of what it will be like so they aren’t heaving their way through a very dense book waiting for the romance that never comes.

I’d love to hear others’ thoughts! Did anyone find it romantic?

I really enjoy Lidia Poët, and I know it’s not going for immersive historical accuracy (like the theme tune 😩), but I’m unreasonably bothered by the heavy eye makeup that’s become a feature since the start of series 2. Anyone else?

{Stormfire by Christine Monson} has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most deranged (if not the most deranged) novel of the genre, and safe to say it will be living rent-free in my head for quite some time.

Despite the diabolical plot, it is very well written and I just adore the cover art. I feel like it captures the characters and the vibe so well. I’m not sure of the artist, but I think it is Pino Daeni.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone as it has nearly all the content warnings, but it was compelling and I read it in record speed. Surely nothing can shock me now!?

I just finished {The Hostage Bride by Jane Feather}. I was keen to read this book as it set during the English Civil War in the 1640’s. It’s a well-written tale of a family feud within the war, and an orphaned bastard young woman (Portia) who finds herself in the middle of the two families - one powerful and the other outlawed. The romance is between her and the head of the outlaws, the dispossessed (and hunky) Earl of Rothbury, Rufus Decatur.

Sounds great, right? Well it would be, except that Rufus is 34 and Portia is SEVENTEEN.

I don’t mind an age gap, not at all… but 17? She’s still a child! She’s a worldly sort of lass, and has quite the libido, but she’s described as very skinny, no shape, messy orange hair and freckles. She sounds like a gangly child.

Why oh WHY did the author think that was a good idea? If she had have been 22 and somewhat womanly it would’ve have been fabulous.

Seems like the others in the series will be much the same. The next one is one of the friends hooking up with another friend’s dad, so we are staring down the barrel of another 20 year age gap. Let’s hope she’s at least over 18???!!

ETA: this isn’t an arranged marriage, it’s a spontaneous passionate romance with a girl he abducted a couple of times.

Do we count {Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence} as historical fiction? It is set in 1920, written in 1928.

I wanted to write about it here because it’s so interesting to read a spicy love story written by a man a hundred years ago. It is just so different! The sex scenes are often so bizarre and perfunctory, and there’s little concern for women’s pleasure unless it comes about together during sex. MMC even denigrated his estranged wife because she needed clitoral stimulation to orgasm (see pic 3).

There’s also some hilarious talk re MMC’s tiny innocent flaccid penis, and FMC’s arse that could hold up the world 😅 (pics 1 & 2).

It’s all very different to the passionate scenes from contemporary HR where the woman has a mind-boggling orgasm in her first sexual experience etc…

If others have read it, I’d love to know your thoughts! I’m still unpacking what I make of it!

FYI there is a sale on this collection of four Bridgerton prequels on Audible in Australia, and perhaps elsewhere! I think I paid AU$6.99 or thereabouts. Books are very entertaining so far!

The Club (Kulüp) is streaming on Netflix with English dubbing or subtitles.

‘In cosmopolitan 1950s Istanbul, a mother with a troubled past works at a nightclub to reconnect with and help the rebellious daughter she couldn't raise.’

I really loved this series. It is beautifully made, and the cinematography, acting and music is superb. It also gave some interesting insight into Turkish history. Highly recommend!

My only gripes are that there were some bits where there were blanks in the story, but I think that may have been a consequence of the dubbing (things lost in translation). It definitely would have been much better to be able to watch it in Turkish. I also didn’t like the last episode, which was a shame!

Overall, it was fantastic! Especially Selim!

Have you seen it? What did you think?

If you’re in Australia (I’m not sure about elsewhere) there are a couple of good Audible freebies by Jennifer Haymore:

{Earls Rush In by Jennifer Haymore}

{The Duke’s Rules of Engagement by Jennifer Haymore}

I’ve included pictures of the blurbs. Both were very enjoyable, particularly Earls Rush In, in my opinion. I’m surprised they’re given 🔥🔥🔥🔥 for steam, I would put it at 🔥🔥🔥. Really great tension and spicy scenes though 👌🏽

My only gripe is that the narrator for The Duke’s Rules of Engagement made the MMC sound like he had a sinus infection.

Overall, good fun for $0 👍